The KKK Is Working To Get Out The Vote — For Donald Trump, Of Course

By Nick Wing, The Huffington Post

With just a week until Election Day, the Ku Klux Klan appears to be ramping up its effort to get GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump into the White House.

KKK fliers left in Madison Alabama, neighborhood solicit votes for Trump. Photo by Christina Ailsworth in her tweet.

Residents in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Louisiana have all reported finding fliers from the KKK outside their homes in recent days. The materials contain calls for people to vote and join the organization as it tackles hot-button social issues with exactly the level of contemplation you might expect from a racist hate group.

“Please join and help us take our country back,” reads a flier recently distributed in Madison, Alabama. “Black Lives Matter Black Panthers are telling followers to kill white people and police officers in the name of justice for the killing of Negro’s (sic) by policemen in the line of duty. These Negro’s (sic) were not innocent. They were thugs breaking the law, and standing up against police.” …

[A] KKK newspaper officially endorsed Trump last month, with a column borrowing the Republican’s campaign slogan….Louisiana Senate candidate David Duke, a former KKK leader who has repeatedly embraced Trump’s mantle, released an ad last week calling for supporters to vote for Trump on Election Day….

These are just the latest examples of white supremacists seizing on the Trump movement in hopes of getting more visibility for their own causes, said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that tracks hate groups.

“They feel that their message is more palatable now that, in their view, a major political candidate is virtually saying the same things,” Potok said.

But while these groups may be getting more attention, they’re still fringe compared to Trump, who has the support of more than 40 percent of Americans, according to recent polling.

“The Klan and other groups have probably grown thanks to Trump,” Potok said. “But the claims that they’ve recruited thousands and thousands and thousands of people as a result of Trump’s candidacy and the whole politics of the last year are clearly false.”

Trump’s campaign pushed back on the KKK newspaper’s endorsement, saying in a statement late Tuesday that “their views do not represent the tens of millions of Americans who are united behind our campaign.